It sounds like the making of a B-movie.
Instagram-famous makeup artist @hayleyyjay and her boyfriend were just settling into their room at a Palo Alto, Calif., hotel.
But just as Hayley Johnsen started sinking into her bath, she noticed a Tic Tac-looking object on the ground . . . wriggling.
That’s when she realized: maggots. Everywhere.
In a Twitter post, she describes the horror:
“It wasn’t a tic tac. [sic] It was a maggot. Then I really open my eyes. Maggot. Maggot. Maggot. HUNDREDS OF MAGGOTS IT SEEMS. COMING DIRECTLY OUT OF THE WALL. ALL OVER THE BATHROOM.”
In the thread, she includes a video of the nightmarish scene.
Outraged, she and her boyfriend confronted the hotel’s night manager — a “disgruntled older man” — and demanded a refund for the $300 room.
He offered to put them in a new room, but refused to refund her, Johnsen says.
After some back-and-forth, “the manager FLIPS out and says that’s it you’re checking out, no refund!” Johnsen says.
San Francisco Bay area newspaper the Mercury News reports that Johnsen then went to the police.
The Palo Alto Police Department reportedly agreed the situation was a health hazard, but could not step in to resolve what they deemed a “civil matter.”
At that point, Johnsen implored her 14K Twitter followers to “avenge” her.
It wasn’t long before The Palo Alto Inn’s Yelp page was flooded with negative reviews — so many that Yelp is currently conducting a review.
“This business is being monitored by Yelp’s Support team for content related to media reports,” an alert on the page reads.
At the time of reporting, The Palto Alto Inn had 52 Yelp reviews and a two-star rating.
Johnsen tells the Daily Dot, “I don’t normally put things like that on them but I felt so disgusted, violated and appalled that there was no way I wasn’t going to share it.”